This exhibition continues the close collaboration between all four artists, developed during the research project Re:place at Bergen Academy of Art & Design & Oslo National Academy of The Arts in 2012-2013.

11/20/2014

Just rediscovered this review by Adrian Searle in The Guardian, of Jane and Louise Wilson's installation A Free and Anonymous Monument from 2003. It seems to say a lot about the issues we have worked with in the Re:place project. "You are here, the work says, but also elsewhere. The world may seem alienating, but it is the only one we have. Focusing on the local, the near, the unregarded, A Free and Anonymous Monument achieves a kind of universality. Hence, I guess, the title. One might link it with other recent works - such as Gabriel Orozco's reconstruction of Carlo Scarpa's crumbling, 1952 modernist architecture at the current Venice Biennale; or the recent film work of Steve McQueen and Tacita Dean. All, more or less, have been concerned with our sense of place, with the conditions we live in, and how places inhabit us and haunt us. These artists all use - but go beyond - documentary, and invest what they do with a sense of subjective history, and, just as importantly, a sense of what it means to be in the present, which is also the place where we meet the past. That's where we are."

10/01/2014

Colour in the City is an exhibition currently showing at Trondheim Kunstforening, featuring work by artists, designers and architects connected to the Light and Colour Group at NTNU, Faculty of Architecture and Fine Art. One aspect of the exhibition concerns the way that colour can determine our sense of place and can establish or underline the identity of a particular place and our responses to it. In the catalogue introduction, co-curator Alex Booker writes:"Colour and materiality play an essential role in shaping our perception of place and identity, colour and material is information, it tells us stories about history, about identity, about territories and functions, about differentiation or belonging. Colour also informs us of the fluctuations of private and public economy and ideas iof social status over time. We absorb colour consciously and unconsciously into our narratives of place and its changing qualities in relation to weather and the seasons make it integral to our personal mythologies of locations and their atmosphere."The exhibition includes photographic documentation of urban environments, plans and illustrations of architectural projects and public art commissions, and a number of individual artworks relevant to the theme. A large part of the exhibition is devoted to the city of Trondheim itself, and its changing colour characteristics. In addition to the informative catalogue, it would have been good to have a map or walking guide to enable visitors to go to the various sites that are documented in the exhibition. For my own part, I recognise many places, and will take an independent city tour. First I will make an iTunes playlist to accompany my tour. There are plenty of songs about colour and buildings, and first on the list is "Red House" by Jimi Hendrix!

9/23/2014

sonozones was an artistic research project carried out in Mülheim an der Ruhr in the summer of 2013 in collaboration between Jan Schacher, Cathy van Eck, Kirsten Reese and Trond Lossius. This project also led to the film installation Muelheim an der Ruhr, August 2013 in collaboration between Trond Lossius and Jan Schacher, presented as part of the This must be the place exhibitions at KINOKINO Centre for Art and Film and Sandnes kunstforening in the fall 2013. A binaural (headphone) version of this work can be found here.

The ‘sonozones’ project investigates sound art practices in public places through personal and public acts of listening and sounding. The topic is explored using artistic processes developed on site in Mülheim in the Ruhr region of central Germany. Four sound art practitioners collaboratively explore ideas and concepts that question the significance and impact of listening and sounding in public places and suburban and urban spaces. The project collects traces and artefacts of the artistic processes as a basis for investigations into key elements of the individual and social dimensions of sound art. The exploration of forms sets the stage for experiments, interventions, and performative presences carried out on site by the artists. A continuous dialogue and the collection of verbal reflections frames these activities. In addition to texts, this exposition lays out a collection of audio recordings, photographs, and videos in order to document and convey sensory experiences as well as thoughts.